Things In Politico That Make Me Want To Guzzle Antifreeze, Now With Joe Scarborough

One of the lesser charms of Tiger Beat On The Potomac is the intellectual discernment the management obviously take in its regular guest columnists. It's where Rich (Sparkle Pants) Lowry wound up, after Sarah Palin kept declining to slide down his chimney dressed like Catwoman. And it's where, every so often, Morning Joe Scarborough unlimbers himself of thoughts too complex for the bleary-eyed shut-ins, and the people who have lost their remote controls, who make up the audience for his day job as host of Wake Up Beltway Dipwads! or whatever that teevee show of his is called.

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He's in there at the moment with a piece about how the president's abilities at artificial pleasantries, manufactured politesse, and general intramural Potomac ass-kissing leave something to be desired. It begins with a resounding, self-referential thud.

Claire McCaskill did her best. She really did. But nobody on the set of Morning Joe was buying the Missouri senator's defense of President Obama's negotiating skills.

Well, that settles that. Morning Joe represents the worst in Beltway pseudo-power gossip with the very worst in courtier journalism — and, in series regular Mike Barnicle, it manages to represent both of them at once — and if McCaskill managed to get crosswise with that collection of crows pretending to be peacocks, it's the best thing I've heard about her in years.

Just compare this Democratic president to the last. Bill Clinton shrewdly worked over political rivals, even when they were in the process of impeaching him. Even then, the 42nd president kept meeting, calling and cajoling GOP hardliners. Why? Because Clinton knew there would always be another vote around the corner. As he told me last week, "Being president requires that you have a very short memory."

Yeah, forget that I joined a whole other bunch of sheet-sniffing peckerwoods to put the country through eight years of phony investigations fake scandals, in which we kept digging up Vince Foster, and finally brought an impeachment forward over a bunch of blowjobs, even though we knew it was going nowhere in the Senate, and which we don't even bring up any more. Forget all of that because the guy whose administration we tried to wreck uses me to raise money these days. Mother of god, we need better elites.

If John Boehner's math skills are really so skewed, why not call a meeting to say that to his face? With the whole world watching, he could then insist that Republicans take a more rational approach while appearing to take a more hands on approach. By meeting more regularly with the leader of the opposition, President Obama may also learn what Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich learned in the 1990s and what Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill learned in the 1980s: that American government works best when political opponents build personal relationships.

These, of course, are the popular Beltway beddy-bye stories. The ones that elide the facts that the primary thing Clinton did was deflate Gingrich's massive self-regard, expose him as a ridiculous political strategist, and begin the process of turning him into an object of ridicule. And the Tip 'n Ronnie tale? Well, in the 1980's, we also had massive deficits, preposterous military spending, government by fabulism, the Iran-Contra scandal, a second-term barely held together under a president with a diseased mind, and, as the late, great Walter Karp once wrote about that peculiar relationship: "What prompts this curious altruism on the part of the popular party? Patriotism, of course, says the estimable liberal journal. 'They did it for the common good," for surely it is good for the country that the national rabble trust and adore their president and blame triple-digit deficits on Fate!"

Compared to that, I'll take the wounded fee-fee's of John Boehner and those of some unnamed "powerful Senate Democrats" any day, thanks.

Also, too: who got a national health-care program passed? The master schmoozer whose penis Joe Scarborough spent eight years chasing around the Beltway, or the uppity aloof guy with no gift for televised tiny-talk? Thought so.

Instead, Mr. Obama's penchant for personal isolation in a political system that demands the opposite will frame his presidency in the history books as one limited by his own personal isolation. On a more practical level, remaining removed from top Washington leaders will also prevent the President from driving his agenda in a divided capital. No one in Washington should want the next four years to look anything like the last two-especially a lame duck president. Make no mistake about it. Barack Obama will win politically by stiff-arming the third ranking public official in American government. But that victory will cost more than it's worth. The damage done will not only be to the president's legacy but also to the country he serves.

In what universe is this president "personally isolated"? This one drives me straight up the wall. He just won his second national election, this one against longer odds even than the first one. He is immensely popular in the country at large, which is supposed to be the only place where popularity is supposed to matter. The country doesn't seem to find him aloof, and he doesn't seem to stiff-arm it, And, in case it's escaped the squint, the only people capable of making the next four years different from the last four years are the people who spent the previous four years refusing to accept the results of the 2008 election. Let John Boehner get all the bats in the House belfry flying in formation. That's his job. The president's is to lead the country for the rest of us. Joe's is to pretend "Willie" Geist is a wit. I don't know what Mika's is, and I may never figure it out.